ved one, and folding her child
closer to her breast, went forth into the cold world
friendless--alone! Once would her grief have been loud and passionate
and wild, but she had passed through a weary probation, and had
learned "to suffer and be still." How, in that dark hour, did her
lost mother's prayer-breathed words, her father's earnest entreaties
come back to smite heavily upon her sorrow-stricken spirit--but
remorse and repentance were now all too late. And yet not too late,
she murmured inly, for had she not a duty to perform toward the little
being, her only, and, oh! how heaven-hallowed, tie to earth, consigned
to her guardianship and care. Did she not firmly resolve never by
ill-judged and injudicious fondness to mark out a pathway filled with
thorns for her darling. It may be that that widowed mother erred even
in excess of zeal, for she would resist the natural promptings of her
heart, and check the gushing affection which welled from the deepest,
purest fountain in the human heart, lest its expression might prove
injurious to the loved one in after years. And thus there grew a
restraint and a seeming coldness on the part of the mother, a constant
craving for love, which was never satisfied, and a feeling of fear on
the child's, which shut them out from that pure trust and confidence,
which are such bright links in the chain that binds a mother to her
child.

* * * * *

This, then, was the Widow Layton who with her little one and nurse had
sought our village, immediately after the decease of her husband, as a
peaceful asylum from the noise and tumult of a world where, in happier
days, she had played so conspicuous a part. It was not so much that
she sedulously avoided all mention of her past history to the eager
questioners around her, from a disinclination that it should be known,
as that she little understood the character of the villagers
themselves--ofttimes mistaking a really well-meant interest in her
welfare for an idle and impertinent curiosity. Mrs. Layton had been
highly born and nurtured, and there seemed to her delicate mind a
something rude and unfeeling in the manner with which her too
officious friends and neighbors would touch upon the sources of grief
which were to her so sacred. And therefore, perhaps unwisely, she held
herself aloof from them, replying to their different queries with that
calm and easy dignity which effectually precluded all approach to
familiarity, and e